We can sum up the past week in one word - WOW! We had not
previously seen a six figure domain sale this year but in the past 7
days there were TWO of them with a third domain falling just
short of the jaw-dropping 100K mark!

The stars of
the show are Truck.com and Woman.com, a pair of
blockbusters that put their sales venues, DomainSystems.com
and Sedo, in the
spotlight alongside Alex Lerman of Dollars4Domains.com.
Mr. Lerman, a buyer of quality generic domains, paid $101,000
to acquire Truck.com through DomainSystems. The buyer of Woman.com
chose to remain anonymous and also requested that the exact sales
price remain confidential. However he authorized the auction venue,
Sedo, to let us know that the domain changed hands for a "low
six-figure sum".

Sedo also handled another stunning sale, overseeing an $88,853
deal for Kreuzfahrten.de (the word for "cruises" in
German). This is the highest sale we have ever reported for a German
country code domain. Another .de also made our new Top Ten
with .com claiming all of the other slots. There has
been some exciting news among the new extensions (.info, .biz and
.us) in recent weeks, but when buyers start rolling out the heavy
artillery the world's two most popular extensions (.com and .de) are
usually the targets.

The top eight domains ALL went for five figures or more,
which is a first, and the cost of admission just to make the chart
was also the highest ever at more than $7,000! You will note
that Woman.com doesn't appear on the chart itself. Without a specific
number there is no way to rank a domain numerically among other
sales. However, we have set up a new section on our Year-To-Date
chart so that sales of this magnitude will remain visible throughout
the year.

We'll come to that a bit later, but first let's dive into the
new Top Ten where DomainSystems, Sedo, Afternic.com
and Pool.com all had multiple entries to further cement their
positions among the world's leading sales venues.

Keep in mind that these are the highest
value sales that have been reported in the past week.
This column is meant to be an educational tool, not a
complete list documenting ALL high value domain
sales. Such a list is impossible to produce because many
sales are kept private at the insistence of buyers, sellers
or both.

One nice byproduct of doing this column is getting to
brush up on my foreign language skills. They were previously non-existent,
but with all of the European terms I am exposed to on our Top Ten each
week, I would say my level of expertise has now been elevated to
"pathetic" and "laughable" may even be
within reach! This is no small feat, especially when something like Neuf.com,
the French word for "nine", comes in at number three. How is
anyone supposed to keep that straight! One thing I have no trouble
appreciating is the $19,040 price the domain commanded at Sedo.

Sedo also sold the German domain meaning "cheaper
telephoning" that completed our chart and had another .de just a
few dollars behind. AutoVermietungen.de ("auto
insurance" in English) went for $7,236. That would have
placed firmly in the middle of the Top Ten in an average week, but
this was no average week (though there are increasing signs that sales
like these will become the new norm in 2004). A couple of other
notables from Sedo were Tageszeitung.de ("daily newspaper"
in English) going for $3,808 and SecuredLoan.co.uk which
sold for £2,000 ($3,733). As strong as their week was, Sedo
told us it looks like they will have some even bigger deals to
announce before the month is out.

Business also continues to accelerate for
DomainSystems. In addition to driving a lot of competition off the
road with that Truck.com sale, Monte Cahn's crew brokered the $16,800
sale of #4 domain BeachHouseRentals.com. They even netted $4,425
for a hyphenated domain, Cancer-Center.com. Cahn also told us
the company had many other strong sales that confidentiality
agreements keep him from revealing.

It is worth noting again that what you see in this
column is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the overall sales
market is concerned. I have been told privately about a number of very
large sales that would easily make our charts if the buyer, seller or
both had not requested confidentiality. They have perfectly sound
reasons for doing so, especially those who are buying with the idea of
reselling down the line. Fortunately, enough participants in key transactions are willing to share information to give us a good
sampling of what is going on in the overall market (and it continues
to look better every week).

Sales at Pool reflect that view as well. In addition
to those three five-figure deals they have on the Top Ten (BodyWrap.com
at $15,500,AOM.com at $14,502 and Sketches.com
at $10,099), Pool has others in the pipeline (coming up below)
and continues to pile up four-figure sales at a healthy clip. This
week those included Tweenies.com at $5,600 and Gamewiners.com
for $5,100 (spelling is correct as shown and this typo-domain
attracts 2300 in Overture with the extension)! In addition, NVV.com
commanded $3,800, ShortStay.com went for $3,750 and
one that would seem destined for trademark trouble - ToysRS.com
- went for $3,100.

Even a long domain like AmericanCreditCard.com
went for $1,450 at Pool and a three-letter .net, KUL.net (this
is a word in some languages) went for $1,250. There are those
who think Pool auctions always end up at abnormally high prices but Jeweler.net
(over 100,000 for the term without extension in Overture) looked
like a good deal to me at $875 and Resumes.org at $640
appears to be a nice buy too (over 400,000 for the term in Overture).

Afternic is always a great source for good buys as
well, but with the market rising prices are moving up there just as
they are elsewhere. They hit the daily double on our Top Ten with NewHouses.com
at $10,000 and GenePharm.com at $7,624. Another
Afternic winner was MegaBalls.com at $5,450 and from a
buyer's standpoint I like Undiscovered.com which went for $1,500.
Afternic also seems to have better luck than most with .ws
(Samoan country code marketed by some registrars to mean
"website"). Hydrogen.ws went for $350 there
this week.

Theo Develegas of Orlando, Florida (known to
domain forum regulars as TimeChange.com)
was floating on air this week after saying goodbye to Gravity.org
for $2,200 in a private transaction. The .orgs are
enjoying increasing demand along with the other major extensions and
there is more evidence of that in the section below.

In The Pipeline:A frequent buyer/seller who is well-known to us tells us his $15,000
purchase of SuperNova.org is now in escrow and Pool had an
auction for VoiceOverIP.com end at $15,200 on Saturday
(Feb. 7). That one hasn't changed hands yet and as a rule of thumb we
don't officially report such high value sales until they have been
finalized. If paid for, this one could wind up on our Top Ten next
week.

You'll recall we mentioned Each.com in this
section last week after it went for $23,500 in a Pool auction
that ended Feb. 2. That one has not changed hands yet either. Another
one the jury is still out on comes from Ebay where
FreeWebPages.com ended with a high bid of $14,600 on Feb.
2. We are always suspicious of high dollar auctions on Ebay (due to a
long history of bogus sales there) and this one is no exception. The
seller has a Feedback rating of 1 (and he was the buyer in that single
transaction). The bidder who pushed the eventual winner up to the
final price has zero feedback. That is not proof of a fraudulent sale,
but those are some of the earmarks of bad deals from the past so we'll
wait and see how it plays out.

Before we move on to this week's New TLD
section, let's take a look at the
Year-To-Date Sales Chart. It has been shaken up a good bit this
week thanks to those high dollar sales noted above. In addition 2004's
dazzling dozen, we have added an Unforgettable Footnotes
section at the bottom of the chart to keep track of landmark sales
like Woman.com that are among the YTD leaders but can't be placed on
the chart numerically.

Domain
Name Journal's Year-To-Date Top 12Highest Reported
2004 Domain
Sales through Sun. Feb. 8 Euro to Dollar Conversion (€ to $)
Based on Rates in
Effect When Sales Were Originally Reported by DNJ

Domain

Sold For

Where
Sold

1.

Truck.com

$101,000

DomainSystems

2.

Kreuzfahrten.de"Cruises" in German

€70,000
= $88,853

Sedo

3.

Metropol.com

€30,500
= $38,230

Sedo

4.

NewYork.info

€22,000 =
$28,086

Sedo

5.

XPart.com

$27,981

DomainSystems

6.

Beat.com

$25,000

DomainSystems

7.

Password.net

$20,555

Afternic

6.

InfoHiway.com

$19,388

Pool

7.

Neuf.com"Nine" in French

€15,000
= $19,040

Sedo

8.

Eden.co.uk

£8,900
= $16,292

Sedo

9.

BeachHouseRentals.com

$16,800

DomainSystems

10.

BodyWrap.com

$15,500

Pool

11.

AOM.com

$14,502

Pool

12.

Invatec.com

$11,000

Sedo

12.

DatingServices.com

$11,000

Pvt
Transaction

Unforgettable
Footnotes:Below are landmark sales where the price level (denoted
by X characters) was released but not the exact price paid.
This will allow us to note significant sales that are among
the Year-To-Date leaders but cannot be ranked
numerically due to a confidentiality agreement that
kept the exact price private. Date shown indicates when the
sale was first reported in Domain Name Journal.

Woman.com
(Feb. 10, 2004)

$XXX,XXX

Sedo

New TLD Section

All of those financial fireworks on the big board
overshadowed the activity on the new extension chart this week, but
they are loading the cannons here too. A seller we are acquainted with
told us today that he has a 3-letter .info currently in escrow at Sedo
that sold for over $10,000! This is a three-letter acronym, not
a word, though the price for either would have to be startling
for those who haven't yet taken note of the market breakout .info has
enjoyed in recent months. The seller told us Sedo has just received
the buyer's payment so only the domain transfer remains to be done and
he plans to take care of that posthaste (we hope he does not injure
himself in his rush to complete the deal)!

Sedo seems to be making a habit of sweeping our New
TLD Top Five chart and this week is no exception. The new list is
headed by a pair of four-figure sales, one a .info, the other a .biz.
In fact those two new global extensions alternate positions from top
to bottom.

Just my opinion, but I think CityOfBerkeley.info
says more about the improving health of the .info market than anything
I've seen in awhile. I would expect Berkeley.info to go
for $1,270, but not a somewhat clunky three-word variant.
If buyers are going to start paying that much this far down the
quality scale it can only mean good things for those holding the
excellent one-word generics and prime two-word terms.

.Biz continues to make some quiet rumblings as
well. I initially thought that if this extension ever saw any success
it would be in the B2B arena where businesses make no bones about what
they are there for. As a long time small businessman, I didn't feel
the emphasis on "business" rather than customer
relationships made .biz a very appealing extension for that market.
However, the very early signs of adoption that I am seeing are
populated with more mom and pop operations than I expected. Success
there would be nothing to sneeze at as small business makes up 70% of
the American economy. Certainly it is way too early to draw any
conclusions. It's just an observation and I am looking forward to
continuing to watch how developments in .biz (as well as .info and
.us) continue to play out.

With no blockbusters this week our New TLD (Top Level
Domain) Year-To-Date chart is unchanged from last week. It
will take over $5,500 to join this club but we are getting the
blindfolds and paddles ready for next week when it looks like we may
be initiating some new members!

Domain
Name Journal's Year-To-Date New TLD Top SixHighest Reported 2004 .info, .biz & .us Domain Sales through
Feb. 8 Euro to Dollar Conversion (€ to $)
Based on Rates in
Effect When Sales Were Originally Reported by DNJ

Domain

Sold For

Where
Sold

1.

NewYork.info

€22,000 = $28,086

Sedo

2.

RioDeJaneiro.info

$9,000

Pvt
Transaction

3.

BDSM.info

€5,500
= $6,947

Sedo

4.

Reifen.biz"tires" in German

€5,500
= $6,894

Sedo

5.

Vancouver.info

€5,000
= $6,378

Sedo

6.

Vacations.info

$5,500

Pvt
Transaction

As always, we welcome all verifiable sales reports from companies,
private sellers or individuals with knowledge of an important sale
made through any channel. To contribute information and help make
this column better, just drop a note to editor@dnjournal.com.
I would like to extend special "Thank You" to Richard
Meyer whose help is invaluable in bringing you these sales
reports each week.

Every Tuesday we publish the highest reported domain name
sales for the previous week. On Monday our contributors send us
their sales data for the previous 7 days. We then compile that
information and write this report for Tuesday publication to give
you the freshest sales report in the industry.

We will close with this standard caution. These are not average selling
prices - these are top selling domains. One of the
biggest impediments to making sales is pricing domains at
unrealistic levels. For most of us, pricing domains at the levels
achieved on the Top Ten chart will leave us waiting a long time to make a sale! We hope you will
use the information presented here as a measuring stick that will
help you price your domains at levels that will put more money in
your pocket more often!

Editor's Note: If you wish to review previous Domain
Sales columns, they are available in our Archive.